BilmBlog500

This fall season marks both my 50th birthday and the 20th anniversary of establishing JABberwocky Literary Agency.  To celebrate, I screened a film at the Museum of the Moving Image for a select group from virtually all phases of my life.  I didn't name the film in the invitation, though the invitations included references to enough of the catch phrases immortalized by the film that it wasn't exactly a state secret. Here, slightly edited, are the program notes I prepared: ---------------------------------------- When Jerry Maguire opened on Dec. 13, 1996, I sat down to see it projected (in 35mm, on part of the screen) on the Imax at the Loews Lincoln Square. I was expecting to like it. I didn’t realize that I was about as close to my autobiography as Hollywood is likely to get. The “expecting to like” is easy; it was Tom Cruise in a Cameron Crowe movie, with a decent coming attraction. Tom Cruise and I have very special relationship.  Top Gun is extra special to me. ...

Even by the standards of early year movies, the start of 2014 has been full of a stunning array of must skip movies. I will include in that list the surprise sensation of February, the Lego Movie,  Surprisingly good reviews, robust box office indicative of strong word of mouth, and if I hadn't been attending with a friend I would have walked out after ten minutes, or retreated to a quiet corner to read on my iPad while the film played,  Thus was just another boring superhero movie with overlong fight scenes, only with Legos. Even at the end, the movie didn't have any charm for me.  Everything is not awesome. Non-Stop on the other hand was a nice action movie.  Liam Neeson lends gravitas and depth to the role of an air marshall being framed for a remarkably clever feat of airplane crime.  The movie is never terribly believable but is always just plausible enough that I was willing to buy in.  I have no idea how the bad guys got at the pilot, or now they fond...

This is the time of year when my membership to the Museum of the Moving Image is worth it, when the film distributors with movies they want to have in the mix for awards season get busy with screenings.  And as a general rule, if I can make it to a screening I will, it sometimes means seeing movies I wasn't interested in paying for that are screening late in their run, sometimes movies I'm not all that interested in at all, and not as often as I'd wish something I'm hugely enthusiastic to be seeing. In the "purposely missed in theatres" category, was last weekend's screening of Beasts of the Southern Wild at the Museum.  This film has had buzz dating back to Sundance in January, when the Variety review called it a "stunning debut."  Hence, I was anticipating it.  But when it actually opened, and I read more reviews, I was quite certain of the fact that there was little the movie would have to offer me. Which, essentially, turned out to be true. ...

Seen at the Museum of the Moving Image, Riklis Theatre, at a preview screening on Thursday March 6, 2008. 3.5 Slithy Toads I hadn't heard much about this movie before the screening invitation arrived, and I don't think I knew anything about the director at all, but with a very reliable cast that includes Chris Cooper, Patricia Clarkson, Pierce Brosnan and Rachel McAdam, how bad could it be? And the night was open on my calendar, and the price (free) was right. More than worth it; it's not a great movie but it's more than passable. SInce this is an indie release that may not get everywhere, a quickie synopsis. It's set in 1949, in Seattle but could be pretty much any place, and Chris Cooper is a salaryman who'd like to leave his wife (Clarkson) for the alluring McAdam. He shares this news with his friend Pierce Brosnan, who narrates, and Brosnan tells us that he quickly has his eyes set on getting McAdam for himself. Cooper decides it would be kinder to po...

This week saw the death of Leonard Rosenman, who won an Academy Award for his work adapting the musical score for Stanley Kubrick's classic Barry Lyndon, among many other film score credits. Most of Rosenman's movies were, as the saying goes, before my time, and before the age of film music by Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams and John Barry that I consider classic, but there's no denying the power of his cv. He was a major influence on films and film music. And Barry Lyndon is an utter masterpiece, one of the Kubrick movies that I simply need to see in a theatre every three or five years to re-make my acquaintance. Music is an important part of its power. The screening I saw of the new movie Married Life (post to come) was the final program at the Riklis Theatre of the Museum of the Moving Image , which is embarking on a major expansion and renovation that will see the Riklis demolished. I won't miss it a bit. It was designed and built in the mid-to-late 1980s, ...

I'm not, I don't think, one of those addictive personalities, but if there's one thing that's always been able to put me away for hours it's Super Breakout. So tonight I went to the groundbreaking ceremony for the expansion of the Museum of the Moving Image , terribly underdressed in my work-at-home clothes surrounded by politicos in suits, and kind of wondering why I bothered.  But after the ceremony, roaming the gallery and new since the last time I'd been on the 3rd floor (because when you're a member, and you go all the time, you never actually go; I go to see a movie, see it, leave) was an old arcade Super Breakout, and there I was, young again, boppin' away on my 2600. I wasn't very happy at first.  The high score was 180, and I wasn't coming close.  The bonus came at 400.  But of course, an addiction is an addiction is an addiction, and I kept hitting for a new game, and slowly but surely the Super Breakout skills started to come back.  I ...